NOTE: This story has been updated twice below and in HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Over the past few months, I have written about the efforts of a group formerly known as the American Christian Academies to form a tea party charter school in Brighton, Michigan that would use tax dollars to run as a public school. The name of the group was later changed to American Classical Academies and its leader Pasquale Battaglia has been leading the charge to get Brighton Public Schools to charter their conservative ideology-driven school.

One of the main opponents of this effort is Glenn Ikens, a Brighton parent who lives near the proposed Lindbom Classical Academy.…

We’ve all seen the signs in restrooms of restaurants we go to that say “Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work”. Why do you see these? Because it’s the law. The Food and Drug Administration requires it. That’s a good thing, right? Because, as the FDA’s regulations say, “Proper handwashing reduces the spread of fecal-oral pathogens from the hands of a food employee to foods”. In other words, as the soap pictured here says, maybe they touched their genitals.

Eeew.

But, according to U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, that’s just the unnecessary tyranny of a government bloated with regulations. Let’s roll tape:

I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says we don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom.…

Let’s you and him fight…

Thanks to the division within the Michigan Republican Party, the state legislature which is dominated by Republicans was unable to find a way to fund our roads. Their internal disputes led them to toss the decision to voters who will decide if we should the state sales tax by one-percent to pay for road repairs, help low income and working poor people, and to ensure our schools don’t take a financial hit.

That internal rancor has now manifested itself in the formation of at least two conservative/tea party groups who will fight the tax increase and a promise by a third – the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity – to join their fight.…

The chances that the Brighton Area Schools will charter a new school that will be housed in the vacant Lindbom Elementary School are now very slim, with a consensus by the board of education that it has no interest in sponsoring a charter school.…

Tea party Republican Todd Courser is the comical gift that keeps on giving. His latest social media missive is titled “What about the seats?” and is over 2,000 whining words about the tyranny of the state House seating chart.

Srsly.

It’s hard at times to know what should and should not be shared with people about the mechanical processes of official government, nor what is even worth sharing, and how it affects them. As a representative my first duty is of course to God, then to my family, then my home district, and finally to the great people of our state that truly want a voice that is uncompromising in its advocacy for the cause of freedom and liberty.…

Over the past two months I have been writing about the efforts of a group of people led by tea party zealot Pasquale Battaglia, to set up a “classical academy” in Brighton, Michigan in an elementary school building purchased from the Brighton Area Schools (BAS). The group is called the American Classical Academy Coalition and they received a $100,000 grant from the state of Michigan in 2012 to open a school in Warren. That school has never been opened despite the fact that the ACAC has received $18,448.44 from our state government.

The group purchased the Lindbom Elementary School building for $1.45 million last year but the source of that money remains a mystery.…

I have been writing about the efforts of a tea party-driven group called “American Christian Classical Academies” (ACA) to open a religion-based school in Brighton and their push to have Brighton Area Schools to be their chartering organization. Having purchased the Lindbom Elementary School from BAS for the tidy sum of $1.45 million, ACA, led by extremist Pasquale Battaglia, are pushing hard for BAS to charter their school. Battaglia is on the record saying that he wants to open the school using our tax dollars and then to detach from the public school system:

We will provide an education option tuition free working toward autonomy from the government and the government run public school systems…

But first Battaglia needs to get his hands on some of those sweet, sweet tax dollars to get his project off the ground.…

I have written before about an effort by a group led by Pasquale Battaglia to get Brighton Area Schools (BAS) to charter his “American Classical Academies” school. This group used to call them “American Christian Academies” before changing the name, and only the name, to avoid being seen for what they are: a tea party influenced school steeped in religion, pretending to be something else in order to rake in state tax dollars.

Last year, BAS sold their Lindbom Elementary School building to Battaglia’s group for $1.45 million. So far, nobody has been able to determine where the money came from.…

Last night during his State of the State Address, Gov. Rick Snyder broke very little new ground. Many of us were happy to hear him support further investments in education and to call for an expansion of civil rights for the LGBT community. One glaring point for me was that Gov. Snyder never once mentioned K-12 education in the part of his speech discussing 2014. Only when he talked about the year ahead did we hear about K-12 education and he completely bypassed the profound failures of his administration and Republican lawmakers when it comes to K-12 classroom students over the past four years.…

Tony Trupiano is the host of the radio program, The Voice of the People, heard on blogtalkradio.com every Monday through Friday from 9 AM until Noon ET and the author of two books, and has been part of the progressive media landscape for 20-plus years. Known as "The Voice of Labor" and as an activist & advocate, Tony has no problem showing up for a good fight. Follow him on Twitter @tonytrupiano.